


linear subjectivity

by ten_and_a_rose



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Epsiode Fix-it: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Romance, is this fluff?, what is fluff exactly?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:17:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5278118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ten_and_a_rose/pseuds/ten_and_a_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rose… How long have you been with me?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	linear subjectivity

**Author's Note:**

> An answer to the prompt from [otpprompts](http://otpprompts.tumblr.com) and reblogged by [timepetalsprompts](http://timepetalsprompts.tumblr.com): "Imagine your OTP with an immortal person A finding the first gray hair on mortal person B.”  
> I thought I’d try something different… :)  
> No beta because I am an inherently impatient child who wanted to get this posted today. If you spot any mistakes, please feel free to tell me! :)

“Hmm,” he huffs. That’s all, a single tiny syllable of discovery as his fingers, those beautiful long fingers that had been running a lazy meandering river through her hair, grow still against her scalp.

Through a haze of sleepy warmth she turns her head just a bit, unwilling to raise it from the peaceful comfort of his lap.  Her answer is a drowsy low murmur that’s half query, half protest.  “Wha’?”

She feels as much as hears him pause, the slightest hitch in the continuity of the universe. Then his reply is unexpected, a question for a question.  “Rose… How long have you been with me?”

What an odd thing to ask when he certainly knows the answer, could probably tell her in a measure of linear time so precise it would outdo the best technology in existence. “Dunno,” she sighs, legs shifting slightly between the duvet above and the sofa below.  She feels so completely happy right here and now, and she’s reluctant to break the spell.  “Forever.”

He chuckles and it’s soft, then fabric rustles and his lips are suddenly much closer to her ear as he whispers, “Rose Tyler.”  She loves that and he knows it, pausing after for the full effect.  But what he says next is strange.  “There is an anomaly on your head.”

Well, she’s awake now.  _“What?”_

She turns on her back to see his face.  He’s smiling down at her with reflections from the fireplace glinting flecks of unbounded affection in his chocolate eyes, eyes that only ever shine like that for her.

“Your head,” he repeats.  “It seems to have grown a strand of hair with a… a distinct lack of pigment.”

Despite his smile, her heart abruptly plummets for him.

Grey. Grey is the colour of dust, she thinks, and there’s an echo in her mind just out of reach murmuring  _everything comes to dust; all things_.  And now the first scatters of dust are in her hair, and he’s the one to find it.

“Oh,” she breathes.

She hasn’t dyed her hair or even had it cut in – years? – and the longest locks she’s ever had of natural chestnut brown are what greet her in the mirror.  Time will change that.  A memory flashes before her, one she hasn’t thought of in a quite a while –  _I am the bad wolf; I create myself._   At first it was odd, she thought, perhaps just a random choice.  But now she knows it sometimes fits that Time should be a Wolf.

And yet he’s  _smiling_ and she doesn’t understand.  She reaches up to take his face in her palms and the smile just grows wider.  In her mind, she feels his faint but constant presence and hears the Tardis humming a bubbly happy melody – and  _nothing is wrong,_  nothing at all.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her.

“You’re barmy,” she laughs, giving in to his infectious grin.  She’d quit teasing him with  _for a human_  long ago.

Gently he places a kiss on her lips then backs away to sit upright.  He takes her hands in his own and tucks them against his chest as he asks again.  “How long?  How long have you been with me?”

Back to that.  He’s unperturbed but he really wants to know, wants  _her_  to tell  _him_.

“I…”  She suddenly falters.  How long?  More memories float to the surface.

 

_He takes her home after meeting Charles Dickens in Cardiff. He says it’s been twelve hours since she left – only it’s been a lot longer.  And she has to admit it to Mickey, admit that she can’t be certain of how much time has passed for her.  “I dunno,” she says.  “It’s hard to tell inside this thing.”  Inside the Tardis, she feels suspended in midair somehow, like holding on to that instant after the leap but before the fall._

_When they leave an unhappy Mum and a grumbling Mickey, she demands an accurate calendar and a clock that will always keep **her**  time.  Grudgingly, he gives them to her._

_On the morning of her twentieth birthday she walks into the console room wearing a Union Jack shirt and before she can say anything the Tardis careens urgently after something **mauve**.  She winds up spending the day itself in the midst of World War II with a target on her back; but it’s all put right in the end when a mother regains her son, they gain a good friend, everybody lives, and the Doctor dances._

_By her twenty-first she’s gotten quite familiar with the New-New Doctor he’s become, all pinstripes and elbows and barely contained excitability.  He gives her a gift this time, a small locket to go on the chain with her Tardis key.  It’s intricately etched with a pattern of circles and lines she knows well by now but cannot read.  He deflects and distracts and won’t tell her what the etching says._

_She spends that day in orbit around a black hole._

_When they’re finally back home on the Tardis, together, he dubs them the Stuff of Legend, and keeping up with London time doesn’t seem as important._

_At Canary Wharf it all converges, everything balanced on the unsteady edge thundering down like a rockslide.  He sends her to Pete’s World; she comes back.  She’s almost trapped forever; but she isn’t.  She almost falls into the void; except she doesn’t._

_She stays.  And after it’s over, he holds her fast and tight to him like a miracle he can’t quite believe is real._

_Whispering into her hair, he finally tells her exactly what her locket says.  He finally tells her everything._

_She’s lost her mum. He searches until he finds a way, burning up a sun for her so she can say goodbye._

_She doesn’t realise it’s her twenty-second birthday until she steps out of the Tardis onto a rocky shoreline she remembers instantly.  She looks to the sky and sees the same beautiful creatures swimming languidly through the air and making music at once intimately familiar and strikingly alien as they call to each other._

_They’ve been watching for a long peaceful moment when he nudges her and she looks back to see he’s holding his hand out to her, palm up.  Two rings, simple bands.  He actually looks nervous and he stammers out, “I thought – if you – I know you said you didn’t need – but still, I thought – if you want –  ”  He can’t complete a sentence so she rescues him with a kiss and a huge bright smile.  He wants her to have something familiar, something human and tangible and there for everyone to see.  She lets him slide the ring on her finger, a perfect fit, and she does the same for him.  And this time when he asks, “How long are you gonna stay with me?” and she answers “Forever,” they both believe it._

 

“Rose,” he says, releasing her hands and pulling her back into the present with a feather-light tap on the forehead.

She scrunches up her face and bats playfully at him.  “I was  _thinking.”_

“Mmm hmmm.  Thinking about answering me?”

She gets it, why he’s asking her this question. How long has she been with him? How long?

“I – ” Again she hesitates.  It’s such a strange thing to give voice to.

She doesn’t know.

_She doesn’t even know how old she is._

She says it, finally.

His eyes are gleaming.  “I thought not.”  Now it’s his turn to pause thoughtfully, then he asks, “Do you want me to tell you?”

She considers that for a long moment.  “Not sure, honestly.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Really.”  She’s intrigued.  “Okay, Time Lord, tell me then.”

His grin shines brighter than the most brilliant star.  “Rose Tyler.” She giggles despite herself.  “Precious girl.”  She feels such love from him, rolling through her mind in waves.

“I’ve always known you were a miracle,” he murmurs. “ _My_  miracle.  And that’s saying a great deal, since you know I don’t believe in such things.”

She laughs and makes a faint get-on-with-it-already gesture, but she’s beginning to suspect she really will be surprised.

“Today’s your birthday,” he announces.  “Well, according to your own subjective linear timeline, of course.”

She doesn’t mark time that way anymore, but perhaps that explains why she was thinking of it. Now, though, he’s keeping her in suspense.

“Doctor, are you gonna tell me or not?”

Something suspiciously like tears mists over in his eyes and it stills her.  He’s gazing at her like he did after Canary Wharf.

“Today, Rose… Today you are one hundred and forty six years old.”

Her mouth drops open and she’s sure he meant to say forty-six, not a three digit number, but no, she heard him correctly.

Perhaps she should be angry he’d waited so long to mention it, or upset at herself for losing track so completely.  Or – or – a million other things.  But she isn’t any of those things.

She’s only shocked, shocked and so happy for both of them that she can’t find a single word.

So she pulls his head down and kisses him.

And a lone grey hair is forgotten, the most insignificant thing in the universe.

 


End file.
